Promises Broken
by Moth Mask
Summary: Sanderson reflects on a long-forgotten friendship, and a promise lost to the ages. Set during the movie. Contains MAJOR SPOILERS, headcanon, character death, and angst. NO (intended) SHIPS.


Hello~ I haven't actually used this account in a while, but I recently wrote my first fic in absolutely forever, and I thought I'd use it to contribute to the RotG archive._ Please note that I also posted this to my Tumblr account. This fic exists in two places because I put it in two places._

__~o~

I knew the Boogeyman. Thousands of years ago, when we were still mortal children, I knew him. None of the others know (except maybe Tooth, who knows many things about many children). I don't plan to tell them, and I'm not sure how they'd feel about it, but it's true. I knew him. And he was my best friend.

We grew up in an ancient, arid place. There were more plants then than there are now, and fewer people. I tend to avoid our old homeland these days. It's often tired and wartorn. My sand is of little consequence when all the sand surrounding it is bloodied.

I was the son of a travelling scholar who fell in love with one of the native women. The others in our village didn't like our family much, since my father was a short, pink man with strange manners. But we got on well enough to survive. My father worked with the wise old scholars. They'd spend days discussing new science and math. I liked when they talked about stars and moons, but the rest was boring. I preferred mother's work - she was a herbalist, and a doctor. She healed people. I always liked that.

Kozmotis - for that was his mortal name - was the son of a farmer. His family was hard and rough as the cracked dirt, but they were kind. We played together when we were young, and studied together as we got older. Our friendship lasted to the end. I like to think it's still there, hidden somewhere in his eyes or heart. Not his soul, though. The fearlings were very thorough with that.

I remember a promise he made, a long time ago. It was when we were still small, playing games of pretend or war - or both - with the other children. They didn't like me much, as I'd taken on my father's stoutness and some of his pinkness. They also found it strange I couldn't speak. Some took offense at it, though I'm sure now it wasn't my fault. Mother tried everything to fix a voice that had never been. Muteness was not a common concept in those days.

I think their parents may have fueled their cruelty, as well. The adults were always suspicious of my family, and those seeds were sowed in their childrens' minds. So they would push me and hit me, and sometimes exclude me altogether. It left me saddened some days, but in a position such as mine, one can either break or grow. I chose to grow.

Even so, it was difficult. I was smaller than I should've been, and somewhat chubby. It was difficult for me to fight back. Kozmotis tried to help me sometimes, but he was only slightly less small than I. His advantage was his boniness; I once heard his father rightly call him a sack full of daggers. His elbows and knees were downright sharp, and it didn't help that his family was often underfed as a result of being poor.

Between the two of us, we made it through most days with few more bruises than our playmates. Roughhousing was the daily pastime, and though we were often ganged up on, we learned to work with what we had. Some days were worse than others, though.

I remember it well. One of the other children, whose name has been lost to the millennia, was angry that day. His agitation rubbed off on the others. It was expected that Kozmotis and I would be their punching bags. That was how it worked. But that day, they were not as merciful as they usually were.

There were six of them, I believe. Five or six. They knocked us over and rained down on us, hardly leaving us a chance to fight back. Kozmotis landed a blow on one of them, I think. By the end of it, we were both bruised and somewhat bloody. I was in a worse state than him, per the norm. But as we lay in the sand and dirt, willing the pain to ebb, I saw something behind his eyes break.

He got to his knees and scrambled the few feet to my body, before collapsing atop it. He lay there, his head resting on my stomach, and sobbed. I remember hearing him apologize again and again and, through the haze of my pain, I tried to console him.

We lay like that for what must have been less than an hour, but felt like days; him crying and apologizing in a language now long-dead, and I trying to comfort him with aching limbs.

That was when he made his promise. He resolved to protect me from then on, to never let harm reach me again. Of course, he couldn't stand against six other children, and most days the promise went unfulfilled. But some days he convinced them to back off, and those are the days I remember most. He was never a bigger hero in my eyes than on those days - not even when he fought as General against the fearlings, or volunteered to guard their prison.

And as I stand here on my sandy cloud, a minuscule island awash in his nightmare thundercloud, I remember him. I remember that Pitch Black, the spirit now drawing back a nightmare-sand arrow, was once Kozmotis Pitchiner, my best friend. I remember the promise he can no longer recall, and the arid village that is now lost to him. And as I look him in the eye, quite literally staring death in the face, I do not hate him. Even as I feel his arrow pierce my form, I do not hate him.

I hate only the fearlings who took my friend from me, and made him break his promise.


End file.
